The hope was that HS2 might spread London’s wealth to the North, but having dismissed HS2’s spiel about spreading London’s wealth to the North, what else is there?

There have been many studies wrestling with the question of whether HS2 will spread London’s wealth to the North, or on the other hand, suck The North’s wealth into London. They are simply forecasts, they are not certain to come true, and it not a surprise that they are contradictory! But there is a large number which forecast that HS2 will drain the North to London, the opposite of the hoped-for effect. What can be done to change this?

The forecasts saying that London will come out on top look at London, the big city, competing against smaller cities and winning against them. But these forecasts fail to see that HS2 is not merely a link between separate towns and London, well-planned it joins those towns closer to each other. Look at this photo of Britain from space by night.

The most noticeable feature is the ring of town around the Southern Pennines, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Nottingham, Leicester, Coventry, Birmingham, and Stoke. They might be called "the central cities" because they are central in Britain. Together they are the country’s centre of population, 11 Million against London’s 8 Million. To get the most benefit, the route must pass through these towns.

The important realisation is that at HS2’s planned speeds, most of them will be within 20 minutes of each other, even Leeds- Birmingham, the furthest apart pair are only 40 Minutes apart. The various parts of London centre are 20 – 40 minutes from each other; the whole ring will have become a “Single City”, and together they can withstand London’s competition.

Why is this breakthrough?

We ask why London is the richest city in the country? One widely touted answer is because it is the capital city, and who can deny that? Another widely touted reason is because it is so big. But if transport within Ringby is arranged not only in and out from London, but within Ringby, it can harvest more “agglomeration benefits” than London can. If you want something special, it will be within easy travelling distance.Look at the set of National Travel Survey statistics under https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/national-travel-survey-2014. The average business trip is only 20 miles, it is sobering to realise that most business is local, taking 45 minutes, but at the higher speeds made possible by HS2, that 45 minutes can take you further, in fact the length of Ringby. See also the other tables, showing the spread of distances and times. Ringby can be a real business community. You want to meet somebody, you can, go there, and get back within an afternoon. You don’t have to tell your partner that you are leaving town. It is a “local journey”.

Such communities of “spread-out” towns made one by much slower transport exist elsewhere in the world. On example is the “Randstad” of the Netherlands. Dutch geographers see the ring of Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam and Utrecht as "Randstad", or "Rim City"; the name highlights the fact that it is a circle with no town in the middle, it has a "green heart". As a unit it is the main city of the Netherlands. It has a population of about 7 million. Another example is Rhein-Ruhr region of Germany, with its capital of Düsseldorf and 11 million people. These conurbations have arisen by accident; China is planning some of its railways to bring together cities as “single cities” in the same way.

In Britain it might seem controversial to create a new major centre, but Germany divides its "capital city" functions among its "big five" cities, Hamburg, Berlin, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt and München, and it is a more successful country than Britain because all its regions are cared for by the regional big city and they all flourish.Ringby won’t just be a business city. It will be a city of variety, each of the different centres will be different and there will be plenty of open space around them. From Sheffield you could go to hear the Hallé in Manchester or something very different in Birmingham, and get back not too late.

It might seem a dangerous thing to create a rival city to London, it could be cricised as “splitting the country”, but in the Netherlands, Amsterdam is the formal “Capital” and main city and The Hague is where the business of government is done. The Netherlands is not “split” by this, it is a normal country. Yet this seems to be exactly what the government is afraid of. All the commentators say and the government accepts that putting local government units together into bigger units is necessary for economic growth, and George Osborne set about it. He set up “The Northern Powerhouse” and “The Midlands Engine” but the results in the North-East have been muddled. Osborne has gone now (never to come back?) the next step should be to set up Ringby as a unit. It would do the whole country a lot of good for Ringby to b another place of wealth creation.

London ought to want to the be the very rich capital of a rich country, rather than the somewhat rich capital of a poor country.